{"doi":"10.3390/jof11070501","title":"Vaginal Clinical Isolates of Candida albicans Differentially Modulate Complosome Activation in Vaginal Epithelial Cells","abstract":"The complosome controls different activities in innate immune cells and epithelial cells; however, its role in the response of VECs to Candida remains untested. In this in vitro study, we compared two clinical vaginal strains of C. albicans, namely, a Colonizing strain from a healthy woman and a strain from a patient with vulvovaginal candidiasis (VVC), for their ability to activate the complosome and release anaphylatoxins in vaginal epithelial cells (VECs). Our results show the following: (i) both strains triggered the cleavage of C3 into C3a and C3b within VECs, while infection with the Colonizing strain led to greater release of the anaphylatoxin C3a; (ii) infection with the VVC isolate led to a strong reduction in both C5 and C5a in VECs, while no increase in C5a release was observed after infection with either strain; (iii) cathepsin-family gene expression and cathepsin D activity were reduced in VECs infected with the VVC strain but not in those infected with the Colonizing strain; (iv) infection with the Colonizing strain induced a significant increase in intracellular C5aR1 while intracellular C3aR levels remained unchanged. Collectively, our data suggests the propensity of this VVC strain to inactivate the C5/C5aR1 axis and to reduce the C3/C3aR axis, dampening the activity of the complosome in VECs. These effects exerted by the VVC strain suggest a novel strategy of immune evasion by C. albicans and may open new perspectives for finding new therapeutic targets against vaginal fungal infections.","journal":"Journal of Fungi","year":2025,"id":569632,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9588,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1474798,"name":"Natalia Pedretti","orcid":"0009-0007-2452-0501","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1042922,"name":"Luca Spaggiari","orcid":"0000-0003-1369-0955","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":414075,"name":"Andrea Ardizzoni","orcid":"0000-0001-9845-7399","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1042923,"name":"Manola Comar","orcid":"0000-0002-9487-861X","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":667894,"name":"Wilfried Posch","orcid":"0000-0001-8955-7654","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":414083,"name":"Robert T. Wheeler","orcid":"0000-0003-3223-7021","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":414079,"name":"Samuele Peppoloni","orcid":"0000-0003-4191-6974","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":414084,"name":"Eva Pericolini","orcid":"0000-0002-5299-8197","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1474797,"name":"Samyr Kenno","orcid":"0000-0002-9448-7344","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":47,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:57:03.510013Z","pmid":"40985395","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}